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2.06.2011

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FORGETTING: MY 2010 IN MUSIC

" . . .(with) downloads . . . you can listen infinitely without knowing often what you're listening to." (Brian Eno, from an interview in Pitchfork)

At it again.

More music is being made and put out there now than there's been at any other point in history and unlike any other point in history,too, you can have them all, if you have the stamina and the appetite and the will and the life to burn. That,and a broadband server. I have a little bit of each and I listened to a ridiculous amount of music in 2010 mostly because it was out there and I could. But Brian Eno was right. I've forgotten what half of it sounds like. This, then, technically, is the half I remember, give or take. Or at least what made it through the filters in one piece and stuck.

There are two lists here. The first is for albums and comes with no annotation as I'm lazy like that. I apologize for the lack of domestic product. This year, I plan to get out more often and remedy that. I didn't have the heart to separate the two Sufjan Stevens records, as they weren't meant to be anyway. And I'm counting all three of Robyn's Body Talk EPs as more of a whole than the comp album she released from bits and pieces of them. Barring the obvious pick , for me and for yearend lists (Kanye West,Cee-lo Green), the rest of my listening turned out to be wildly catholic, even more than 1999, taking in, as it does, the gleeful return of stalwart old favorites Superchunk and Gil Scott Heron and a thoroughly forlorn Tracey Thorn, my new fetish for three strains of pop (dream, K and J), as well as the robust jazz-funk of The Budos Band, the DIY psych of Coma Cinema , the orchestral manoeuvres of Owen Pallett, the jubilant pop of 2NE1 and the weirdly comforting goth balladry of Zola Jesus.

The second list is for songs, not really singles, as I'm terribly misinformed about these things, having lost the old vigor to swim the media bath for coordinates. I used to hoard copies of SPIN and Q and Mojo to use as maps for the hunting and gathering of pop that consumed half my life and money. These days, with zero danger and less at stake, I forage blind. And I don't really care. Turns out, though, that most of these were singles, which is odd and neat.

One of the rules I set for myself is that nobody from one list can cross over into the other. It's a rule I was tempted to break several times - - -with Robyn and 2NE1 and Kanye and Cee-Lo from the albums list and LCD and Teenage Fanclub and The-Dream from the songs list. The other rule is that no one gets two slots on either list.

I wrote a decade-ender list of albums and songs that both peaked at 40 and ran the risk of leaving out a lot, which happened. I wanted to keep this at the same number but I got as far as 20 for the albums and up to 46 for the songs and ran the same risk, with Allo Darlin' and Nicki Minaj as casualties. I ranked both lists, too, as ranking is my new toy. And like most toys, it's both a bit of fun and possibly immaterial. Love was my only gauge and love's impervious to hierarchy. I also didn't go as far as including albums and songs released before 2010 that I heard for the first time and played a lot last year as that was not the point- - -sorry,then, City And Colour and Skeleton and the Girl-Faced Boys and Clazziquai Project and Empire of the Sun and Jesus Walk With Me.

Besides,if I had, we'd be here all night. And this is late enough as it is.

47. David Sylvian, Playground MartyrsIt was always Sylvian's vocals, from Brilliant Trees on, that made me his bitch, more than his sober artpop, really, but it didn't take long for me to get around to loving that,too. He's the closest thing I have to a Sinatra, to a devotion hinged almost entirely on mechanism. This is a torch song disrobed until there's close to nothing left, attaining a spectral quality, in both the consistency of the songform it co-opts, and in the threads of melody flitting through it that his voice divines then exposes.

46. Christina Aguilera with Ladytron, Little DreamerBionic worked despite not being as all that as I'd hoped, but on paper, the pairing up of Christina with Ladytron for two bonus tracks smacked of a car crash slightly less grotesque than the car crash the pairing up of Christina with Cher turned out to be but a car crash still, and yet the parts match both times without a seam out of place, more so on this sci-fic lullaby whose prosaic sappiness, sung as if to a child but could well be to a lover estranged by either geography or maybe death, gains a warm, eerie glow.

45. The Pipettes, Stop the MusicThe new Pipettes did somewhat jump the shark, their kitsch-disco tropes getting the better of them, but for this fabulous scorcher, which gets by on little more than that slinky Latin beat and the spring it restores to their step.

44. R.Kelly, Number One HitIt sounds like it could be one but it will never be, of course, which is both its pathos and its power.

" . . .stepping off the platform of you and I/ I'm leaving it all behind . . . " When that stacatto guitar riff comes in on the second verse it makes the romantic suicide invoked by that first line seem like the sweetest of freedoms even as Camyl herself isn't quite so sure but goes along with it anyway.

42. Efterklang, HarmonicsThey traded off , on Magic Chairs, that sense of playfulness and sprawl they're expert at for a coherence and immediacy they don't have the sea legs for yet, but a delightful teeter-totter is struck here, nibbling away, as it does, on its own self-imposed boundaries.

40.The Silver Seas, What's The Drawback? " . . .she's stopping traffic and moving through time/she's like a 45 record in the back of my mind . . . " If there's an argument more persuasive than this for the strip-mining of ELO as a sonic influence with as much mileage as Gang of Four, I haven't heard it yet. Except, perhaps, if you count the new Manic Street Preachers, which I do.

39.Free Energy, Hope ChildThat torch they carry for Thin Lizzy would be corny if it didn't actually give their songs balls and those balls crunch. Crunchy balls,yeah.

38. Foxes In Fiction and Galleries, BordersBedroom recordings became something of a substitute habit for me last year, taken in as much by process and principle as I was by product. Warren Hildebrand was a constant go-to man for most of it and this collaboration stuck with me the most, a song about distances that induces the yearning that comes from it more than anything did, except for the actual distance itself.

37. Lucky Soul, White Russian DollThat cartilage of Motown by way of Johnny Marr that bolsters its indiepop stomp is what makes being subsumed by a lover, as if you were a matryoshka doll, feel almost triumphant.

As fired-up as that other song with the same name is in feeding its romantic anxieties through a primary-colored ebullience - - -with a dash of mariachi horns for gravy. Insanely catchy, terribly uncomplicated, nothing you haven't heard a hundred times before but wouldn't mind hearing again, which is sort of the point of pop music but very seldom is these days.

34. Twin Sister, PhenomenonsNew wave revivalism that feeds off aura more than nostalgia and artifice. There was a lot of those last year and there was a lot of those I liked - - -Wild Nothing, Radio Dept., Twin Shadow - - -but this tasty pastry and the equally tasty EP it came from one-ups nearly all of them.

33. Gobble Gobble, Lawn Knives" . . . crackle crackle flake/ let no one know . . . " Wild, inspired nothingness that exudes, in equal measure, a nutso bob and weave and a frantic joy the sort of which was nowhere else to be found last year. My radar is thusly trained.

31. Warpaint, UndertowPossessed of a similarly hazy smolder as Hope Sandoval and Miki Berenyi, these lovelies earn my enthusiasm to disappear into it with this lovelorn ballad that feels like its title, perking up near the end as if breaking surface, but mostly ebbs and flows in a sensuous whirlpool of faintly sinister bliss.

Of a piece with the album in that it still sounds uncomfortable in its own skin which is part of what makes it tick, but this time all that coarsened, fitful grayness is in service of a brighter shaft of melody that is, if not optimistic, then hopeful. Also, that guitar riff at the start drips all kinds of juice.

29. The-Dream, Florida UniversityNot that we'll ever be given the satisfaction of consensus, but in the real world, girls can be assholes, too, and here's The-Dream spewing on one of those, his ex. " . . .I was the realest thing you've ever known/ I can't wait to say I told you so . . . "Scorned boy venom that's more cocky than furious, but near the end, after the chorus that explains the title (" . . . this is short for Florida University . . .F U . . .F U . . .FU. . . FU . . . "), it throws in a mocking fake Bieber sample that makes the song not only cut like glass but draw a little blood, too.

I was going to write something here about how all pop music boils down to a matter of context and use as example the way this attaches a kitschy 80s sample - - -F.R.David, no less - - -onto a not-much ditty and makes a tiny gem out of the graft . . . but if I'm going to be very honest, I'm stone in love with this for no particular reason. Uffie is the captain of my heart, at least for the 4 minutes 57 seconds it's playing.

27. The National, SorrowLays it on a little thick, sure. " . . .sorrow found me when I was young/ sorrow waited, sorrow won. . ." Like a clenched fist, this is all pent-up seethe building up to a detonation that never comes because that would mean some form of release and I'm not sure that's what Matt wants. " . . .'cause I don't want to get over you . . . " I feel you,man.

26. Los Campesinos!, Straight In At 101Not getting enough sex - - -a universal lament, almost - - - makes Gareth antsy and skittish and he throws a fit and takes the song with him which is good for us if not necessarily for him.

25. Teenage Fanclub, Sometimes I Don't Need To Believe In AnythingThe last sentence of what I wrote about #36 applies here. Somebody should tell Norman Blake and Gerard Love that doing the same thing twice has long been outlawed by the tastemakers of pop because they keep doing exactly that and do it wondrously both times. I like how the bit that goes ". . .taking a ride on a subway train/ to feel more alive when you get back out again . . . " makes me feel like the lyric says and that's even before we get to the guitar din in the chorus that I might've seen coming but when it does is the wind beneath my wings.

24. Utada Hikaru, Goodbye HappinessA happy pill of potentially perpetual efficacy. And yes, the irony of that isn't lost on me.

23. Sleigh Bells, Treats:I do have all of 2011 to burrow into the album as I got around to it a little late and didn't pay it much mind at first, save for this monolith of guitar bombast that's every bit as 80s as Jean Claude Van Damme, every bit as buff and full of itself,too. A blow-up doll for my infatuation with powerchords. Even better than the real thing.

22. Memoryhouse, Lately (Deuxieme)The feeling I get of being submerged and the line about breathing through machines and also the one about asking to be shut off makes it seem this is about the benign forcing into corners and making peace that happens in the nearness of death, and maybe it is, but I've learned not to take things as they seem, as this could be about other,less fatal forms of dying. It's so beautiful regardless, it makes succumbing to one or the other almost something to look forward to.

21. Jenny And Johnny, Big WaveThe recession confuses Jenny Lewis and you can tell from the anxious albeit effervescent tremble that the confusion frightens her a little, too.

Wakarimasen*but when teengirl fantasy Kawauchi Sawa throws herself into this vortex of trance and swims(dances) against the current, the sensation was/is a euphoric few could touch.

*"I don't understand"

19. Arcade Fire, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)Merely catchy where they used to be opulent and weird along with the catchy, I never quite got The Suburbs,or it never got to me the way Funeral did and still does, or I didn't give it enough time and probably should. But the unsentimental nostalgia of this magnificent chamber disco oddment, in which Regina Chassagne sings herself to rapture, took hold. Time will reveal that it really is their masterpiece. Or you could take my word for it now.

18. Girls Generation, Run Devil RunThe partial ruin of Oh! was that it was tasteful here and there when it should've been tasty from end to end, but what ultimately rescues it are the skyscraper beats the girls strap on here and all the alpha-female sass they pump it up with as they stride across the land like a nine-headed pop monster crushing nearly everybody under their heels. Also, a massive attack of cute.

Not so much a kundiman deconstruction as that implies a taking apart and a putting back into place to get to the bottom of things and this is a band that's too familiar with the form and its tales of love gone missing to need to do that. More a kundiman reconstruction, then, a summoning of the necessary auras and demons to make you feel as at home with all that treachery and bleeding.

16. No Age, GlitterPummels you still, if you're worried about a softening of blows, but it is the swooniest they've gotten and you can make out what Dean Spunt is singing but not so much that you don't have to still lean in, as leaning in against the chaos of its surfaces to pick up signals is what makes their punk special.

15. LCD Soundsystem, All I WantThis Is Happening was not a record wanting for peaks but it's to the exhausted glitter of this krautpop love song with its payload of feedback at the end that I come back to again and again and again. " . . .all I want is your pity/ all I want are your bitter tears . . . " Not so much a Berlin-era Bowie rip as it is a gene-splicing.

14. Krakow Loves Adana, Cold and Closed" . . . floating speech/ except the words we need/ and with some time there might return the fire/ but love was always a fragile kind of truth/ life was always a fragile time for you. . . " More than its intolerable wounded loveliness, this is up here out of the number of times I played it and play it still. Like with hangovers, sometimes the medicine for melancholy is more melancholy.

13. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , Round and RoundTaking soap and water to the scuzz that Ariel Pink used to lather his records with is an aesthetic cop-out only to those who saw lo-fi as a moral stance rather than a trope you can discard as soon as the shtick wears itself out, which it will if the bells and whistles of your pop are the songs anyway. Multi-sensation studio-centric popcraft up there with Todd Rundgren if his prog gene had been even more squirrely, and every bit as epic as that suggests.

12. Deerhunter, HelicopterEven before reading the Dennis Cooper short short story it was based on, there already was a niggling sense that, for all its weepy beauty, Bradford Cox is singing about the sort of loss you don't come back from. And when he gets to the line " . . . now they're through with me . . ." the blood temperature tends to drop.

11. Paul Weller, Aim HighIn a way, a returning to the whole modern retro duality that gave his rather fertile and unjustly reviled Style Council period vitamins, reinvigorating Weller even more than he already is. This is a glimpse of what could have been if he'd seen it through to its endgame. Biases aside, and going by the keening soulful swirl here, it would've been grand.

10. Janelle Monae, Cold War" . . . I was made to believe there's something wrong with me . . . " Janelle's a tornado, death-defying and beholden to a thousand fancies, most of which she indulges in the record she was roundly exalted for, making this exhortation to self-belief a will to power on a winning streak. With digable Kelindo guitar solo as extra jackpot.

9. Best Coast, Our DealBethany wants to break the deal and be more than friends but she can't so a stray cuddle after sex is the most she can hope for. That sleeve of guitar fuzz Girlfriendwore its subservient heart on had a charge running through it, sure, but it merely nips at the heels of this gigantic ballad and the way it wrings from Ms. Cosentino's disappointment the sort of sweet, sweeping melodramatic ache that would make even Dusty Springfield weep

8. Drake with Alicia Keys, Fireworks" . . .you never see it coming you just get to see it go . . . "That's Drake in the corner, that's Drake in the spotlight, losing his religion. Not much of a rapper, not much of a singer either,and his 2Pac metaphor's a little weak but somehow that makes the melancholies of affluence and celebrity that beset him more poignant than it probably should be.

7. Crystal Castles with Robert Smith, Not In LoveThe futuristically-named Ethan Kath and Alice Glass do crop up on that other list, sure, but this shouldn't really count as breaking a rule, or at least can be cut some slack on a technicality, being, after all, a re-imagining so thorough it comes into its own. And roping in Robert Smith really was last year's pentium chip of stunt-casting.

6. Alicia Keys, Unthinkable (I'm Ready)“ . . .you give me a feeling that I never felt before/ and I deserve it, I know I deserve it / it's becoming something that's impossible to ignore/ it’s what we make it . . .” Alicia looking down a drop we've all been on the edge of before, so you understand why she's feeling a little vertigo and a little open to harm and a little peril in her bones and also why the song throbs with such suspense. Plush, caution.

5. Peryodiko, Agawan BaseThe way it pulls its anthemic punch at the last minute in that soaring chorus that makes you feel as if everything's forgiven, is like a catch in the throat that reminds you it isn't.

4. Beach Fossils, Face ItThat utopian lope, not quite summery, not quite the feeling of sand between your toes, but like a gust of wind in your face telling you that you'll get there at some point. And just when you thought the pretty guitars couldn't get any prettier, they do and do they.

3. Rihanna with Drake, What's My Name?More than Beyonce's “. . .to the left . . . “ , it was the way Rihanna turned her eye-rolling smirk of a ". . .puh,leeze . . . " into an assassination on the majestic Take A Bow that was the cocky height of pop kiss-offs. She's no stranger to empowerment, and she’s grown into it so that she doesn’t even need to flex as hard. " . . oh na na /what's my name? . . . " Oh, she wants the boy bad but he's only having her on her own terms. Don't misconstrue ". . . you're so amazing you took the time to figure me out/thats why you take me, way past the point of turning me on/ you 'bout to break me, I swear you got me losing my mind . . . " as a giving in. It isn't a surrender, it's a taunt.

2. Minus the Bear, Excuses" . . . running out of excuses/ when we know what the truth is/ I’m into you/ when you hear this song/ you’ll say you knew all along/ you’re into me too . . . " I still can't make up my mind if this was/is my mantra of denial or my fight song. But half a year after I first heard it, I'm still taken with the way it simmers sexily so.

". . .they told me how they fear it/now they're putting it on their tongues . . ." The Body of Christ theories hold , if only for this line, but it's not dropping acid they're really singing about but the confounding spectacle of the Buddha Boy , at least on the bit that goes ". . .no food and water for the better part of ten months/ quietly he sat between the folds of a free trunk . . ." As much about the disarming tenacity of the faithful as it is about the bewilderment it arouses in those of us who can't muster up the courage. That's wondrous in and of itself but the supple, kinetic sonics catch up fine.

2 comments:

Hey Mark. I sort of abandoned the Ariel Pink album a few months back until I started drafting this piece during the holidays. I've since put it back on rotation. I used to uphold The Doldrums as my favorite work of his. But something tells me it's about to be replaced. :)